Chapter 26
Dexter
I don’t know how long my knot lasted, but the pleasure was beyond anything I had ever known. I gently lapped at Toby’s neck as my knot went down, and he murmured happily. He smelled like bliss and contentment and pleasure, and I tucked my head into his neck, inhaling deeply.
He smelled like he was mine.
We laid together, holding one another, and eventually when my knot went down I gently pulled out of him. He made a small sound of protest, but he was already half asleep, and we both drifted off, wrapped around each other.
The sound of car doors woke me briefly some time later, and when Jude spoke from outside, I could hear him clear enough.
“Aiden is sleeping. I’ll let you know when he wakes,” Jude said. I heard one of them walk inside with a heavier footfall—probably carrying the man—and the other follow behind.
It was still dark out, and Toby was resting peacefully beside me. I brushed my hand through his hair. He was mortal, just like that man who had been carried inside. He was mortal, and I was not. I didn’t think I’d really grasped what that meant until his stalker had found him.
Some day Toby would die.
Hopefully I would have decades with him, but some day I wouldn’t have him anymore. That was the nature of mortality.
I didn’t think I could bear it. I loved Toby more than I’d ever loved anything in my entire existence. He was more to me than my pack, more than anything in my life. I would give everything up for Toby.
If he died someday, then I would find a way to follow him into the afterlife. I could not contemplate the thought of being separated from him. I would find a way for us to always be together.
With that thought, and a press of my lips against his skin, I let myself fall back to sleep.
Toby’s breathing changed, and I woke instantly. I was on immediate alert, but he was only waking up. I gently caressed his skin, and he rolled into me, smiling against my chest.
“Good morning, baby,” I murmured.
He pressed a kiss against my skin, and I growled, unable to help myself.
“Are you purring?” Toby asked, giggling.
“I… Am I what ?” I asked. “I’m not… I’m not a cat . I’m a hellhound . We don’t purr .”
Toby chuckled into my chest, clearly delighted at my response.
“I am… I am growling ,” I added.
“Nah. Growling is scary. This is all soft and happy,” Toby argued.
I thought for a moment. Ok, perhaps he had a point. Still, hellhounds did not purr .
“I am rumbling in pleasure,” I finally settled on.
Toby laughed again. “Well, I love your rumbles, my sexy neighbor.”
“Your sexy boyfriend,” I corrected.
“How about just mine,” Toby said, looking up at me and pulling my head down for a quick peck.
“Yes,” I rumbled in approval. I liked being Toby’s. Before I could pull him in for another kiss, Toby jumped out of bed.
“Hey,” I protested, but he just started rifling through his drawers and pulling on clothes.
“Later,” he answered. “Your brothers must be back by now.”
“They are,” I admitted. “They got home in the night. The guy was sleeping.”
“Well, we’re going to go over and check on him,” Toby insisted.
I supposed that was the proper thing to do.
We managed to get dressed with only a minimal amount of kissing and caressing, and we walked over to my house hand-in-hand. When we walked up the steps and into the house, I could hear Jude and Corbin in the kitchen, and even Toby inhaled deeply at the smell of breakfast cooking.
The man was sitting on the couch under a blanket, even though it wasn’t cold. He was thin, and his head was shaved clean. He had eyes that seemed too big for his face, and I could tell that he was very attractive, despite the obvious trauma he’d been through. He didn’t even look over at us.
Toby walked over slowly and sat in a chair across from the guy.
“Hi Aiden. I’m Toby,” he said.
The man jerked at that, finally looking over at Toby.
“You’re safe?” the man asked.
“Yes. He didn’t get me. He tried, but he didn’t get me,” Toby said.
“Good,” Aiden said, looking at me. “He talked a lot about you at the end. He said he wouldn’t kick me out, and until you decided to move in with him, I could stay.”
Toby looked like he didn’t know what to say to that.
The man turned and looked off into the distance. “I knew he would probably kill me. I knew that from the moment he told me he was ‘breaking up’ with me. I didn’t want him to get someone else, but at the same time, I hoped… I hoped maybe it would give me a chance to get away.” He looked back at Toby then. “I’m sorry.”
Toby reached forward tentatively with his hand extended in invitation. The man flinched a little, but then he reached out and let Toby hold his hand.
“None of this is your fault,” Toby insisted. “None of it. And it’s ok that you hoped for that. Anything that went through your head is ok. Do you understand?”
Aiden stared at him, but eventually he nodded his head.
“He’s dead,” I said.
They both looked over at me, and Aiden tilted his head. I could smell his disbelief.
“I killed him. He suffered,” I added.
Toby flinched a bit and looked over at Aiden, worried. Oops. Was I not supposed to tell the man that?
Aiden eventually nodded his head, though. “Good,” he said, then he let Toby’s hand go and gripped his blanket again.
“You have choices,” Toby said. “We can get the police involved, but he is dead, and they’ll never find him, and we’ll deny the fact that we killed him.”
Awww, look at Toby being all protective of us, like we couldn’t handle the human police. Still, it was super cute.
“Or,” Toby continued, “we can bring you home, back to your life.”
Aiden snorted at that. “What life? I was a bartender. No family. No boyfriend. He knew all that. Friends, sure, but they gave up soon enough. Sure, people looked for me, but after a year… there’s no one left looking for me. He let me look it up. He let me search articles and the internet. He was trying to show me that no one but him cared about me. And really, I’m not the man I was before. I wouldn’t even know who to be with my friends. They wouldn’t know me now. I don’t know myself.”
Toby looked stumped at that, but I jumped in.
“That’s ok. We can give you a place to stay, a job, and new people. You can take your time finding out who you are now,” I said.
He looked over at me. “You want me to stay here?”
“You could stay in this house, but I think I have an even better solution,” I said. When the man nodded, I went out to the porch.
Time to call the oracle. Surely the first stray and this one could bond over their human trauma and stuff.
Cassius strangely hadn’t sounded excited to hear from me. When I told him I had another human who had been held prisoner, he had told me to bring the guy over, muttering something about not trusting me with humans.
I resented that. I always found them good homes.
Toby had insisted on coming along, and his presence seemed to set Aiden at ease, so the three of us headed out in the car. Although Jude and Corbin had rescued him, Aiden hadn’t seemed attached to them in the least. I wasn’t sure if that was because they’d shown some of their hellhound abilities or not, but he also didn’t seem scared of them. He just seemed indifferent.
So it was just the three of us that walked into Cass’s shop that afternoon. The guy from the basement was at the counter when we walked in, and he gave us all a glower. Good to see he was still feeling feisty. Maybe he’d spread some of that energy to this guy.
Cassius hurried out, saying, “Q, be nice. Aiden is going to stay with us for a bit. He’s got a similar story to yours.”
“What, he was held captive in a basement?” Q snarked.
Aiden looked at him oddly, then said, “No, it was a bedroom with bars on the window.”
That seemed to shut Q right up, and he eventually nodded at Aiden.
Cassius’s angel mate stepped out of the back then, and he walked over to Aiden. He murmured something, and he led Aiden into the back. He went, stopping at the door.
“Thank you,” he said to us simply. Then he looked at Toby. “I’m glad he didn’t get you, and I’m glad he’s dead.”
Toby just nodded.
Once they were in the back, Q said, “Fuck, man, you find all the trouble.”
I shrugged, saying, “I find humans in need of good homes.”
“Jesus, we aren’t cats,” Q muttered, and then he went into the back as well.
I just blinked, looking at Toby. “I know they aren’t cats. Why does everyone keep comparing stray humans to cats? I think it’s disrespectful.”
Toby just laughed and kissed me lightly, and Cassius sighed happily from the counter.
“Oh, I do love a happy ending. I knew it would all work out. You two are so good together,” he murmured.
A happy ending… for now. Because Toby would die someday, but maybe Cassius could help with that.
“So…” I started, glancing at Toby, unsure how to continue. I didn’t want to bring up his mortality and make him worry.
“What? What’s worrying you?” Toby asked.
“You’re mortal,” I answered. “I could have lost you to the stalker. You could get hurt, or get sick, and I don’t think…” I trailed off, unable to continue.
Toby’s face fell, and he reached out to grab my hand.
Cassius, however, just snorted.
“Oh, you two, don’t go getting all maudlin on me,” Cassius answered, starting to wipe down the counter. “As if you could be separated,” he muttered under his breath.
We both looked over at him, surprised.
“Uh, we can’t?” Toby asked.
Cassius snorted. “Of course you can’t. He marked you.” Cassius gestured vaguely between us, but I really had no idea what he was talking about.
He obviously figured that out, because he rolled his eyes. Toby was looking at me all hopefully, and I was staring at Cassius, waiting for him to explain.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I answered.
“You think someone would have filled you in. You marked and mated him, Dexter. That means your life forces are tied together. Where one goes, the other goes. He couldn’t have died out in the woods, because I’m pretty sure you marked him before that. The beginnings of the bond were already forming last time I saw him,” Cassius explained.
Toby and I stared at each other for a moment of frozen time, and then we crashed together in a rush, relief flowing through us both.
“Supernatural beings and afterlifers. You’d really think you’d know a little more about your own capabilities,” he muttered. “Leave it to the oracle to always clean up after everyone else’s mess.”
When I finally pulled away from Toby, I looked over to see him grinning at us despite his snark.
“Thank you, Cassius,” I said.
He nodded at us both. “I’ll take care of Aiden. Off with you two. I’m sure you have some more marking to do.” He winked and went back to cleaning up, and although I was tempted to throw Toby over my shoulder in order to get him back to my house, somehow we managed a rather fast walk back to the car instead.
Mine. Toby was really mine forever. And I was his.
Apparently I loved happy endings too, because I couldn’t stop grinning the entire way home.